Marten’s Coltrane Supreme 2

At almost 6’ high, weighing 507 lbs, and costing $480,000/pair, the Coltrane Supreme 2 from Swedish company Marten was one of the more extreme loudspeakers at the 2014 CES. But to my surprise, playing my own recording of the Jerome Harris Quartet playing Duke Ellington’s “The Mooche,” from the CD Rendezvous, it sounded delicately detailed, with a superbly stable rendering of the recording venue, Chad Kassem’s Blue Heaven Studio in Salina, KS.

Despite having a multiplicity of drive-unitsone 20mm diamond supertweeter, one 51mm diamond tweeter, one ceramic-cone midrange unit, one 8” laminated aluminum-sandwich woofer, six 8” laminated aluminum-sandwich woofers, and six 11” passive radiatorsall crossed-over with first-order filters, this enormous speaker, driven by Pass Labs Xs-300 two-chassis monoblocks, spoke with one voice, perhaps I was told, because all the driver’s acoustic centers are in the same plane.

The midrange driver (above, sourced, I understood from Accuton but sadly broken by a previous visitor to the suite) has a concave cone profile to move its acoustic center forward to coincide with those of the tweeter and supertweeter. Note how the annular magnet leaves the rear of the diaphragm complete free from acoustic obstructions, something this driver shares with the Vivid drive-units.